Latest Nature Photonics Stories

Nanotechnology has already made it to the shelves of your local pharmacy and grocery: nanoparticles are found in anti-odor socks, makeup, makeup remover, sunscreen, anti-graffiti paint, home pregnancy tests, plastic beer bottles, anti-bacterial doorknobs, plastic bags for storing vegetables, and more than 800 other products.How safe are these products and the flood of new ones about to spill out of labs across the world? A group of researchers at Washington University is devising instruments...

MIT researchers have developed a new way to tune the frequency of lasers that operate in the terahertz spectrum. The result is an important step toward airport scanners that could tell whether a vial in a closed suitcase contains aspirin, methamphetamines or an explosive.Tucked between microwaves and infrared rays on the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz rays can penetrate clothing, plastic, and human tissue, but they're thought to be safer than x-rays. Since they're absorbed to different...

The next generation of optical devices could borrow inspiration from the spectacular eyes of the mantis shrimp.Reporting in Nature Photonics, researchers from the University of Bristol said mantis shrimps from the Australia's Great Barrier Reef have the most complex eyes known to man.The shrimp's eyes can see in twelve colors and distinguish between different forms of polarized light.By comparison, humans can only see in three colors.Researchers said the marine crustaceans' have special...

Physicists at UC San Diego have successfully created speedy integrated circuits with particles called "excitons" that operate at commercially cold temperatures, bringing the possibility of a new type of extremely fast computer based on excitons closer to reality.Their discovery, detailed this week in the advance online issue of the journal Nature Photonics, follows the team's demonstration last summer of an integrated circuit"”an assembly of transistors that is the building block for all...

U.S. scientists say they've developed a light imaging technology that could lead to creation of more powerful microscopes and other optical devices. Princeton University researchers said when photographers zoom in on an object to see it better, they lose the wide-angle perspective -- they are forced to trade off big picture context for detail. The scientists say their new imaging method might also lead to lenses that show all parts of a scene at once in the same high detail. It allows you to...

A Princeton-led team of researchers has discovered an entirely new mechanism for making common electronic materials emit laser beams. The finding could lead to lasers that operate more efficiently and at higher temperatures than existing devices, and find applications in environmental monitoring and medical diagnostics."This discovery provides a new insight into the physics of lasers," said Claire Gmachl, who led the study. Gmachl, an electrical engineer, is the director of the...

New miniature image-capturing technology powered by water, sound, and surface tension could lead to smarter and lighter cameras in everything from cell phones and automobiles to autonomous robots and miniature spy planes. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have designed and tested an adaptive liquid lens that captures 250 pictures per second and requires considerably less energy to operate than competing technologies. The lens is made up of a pair of water droplets, which vibrate...

The pinhole camera, a technique known since ancient times, has inspired a futuristic technology for lensless, three-dimensional imaging. Working at both the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and at FLASH, the free-electron laser in Hamburg, Germany, an international group of scientists has produced two of the brightest, sharpest x-ray holograms of microscopic objects ever made, thousands of times more efficiently than...

The latest bright idea in energy-efficient lighting for homes and offices uses big science in nano-small packages to dim the future Edison's light bulb.In the August issue of Nature Photonics, available online, scientists at the University of Michigan and Princeton University announce a discovery that pushes more appealing white light from organic light-emitting devices.More white light is the holy grail of the next generation of lighting. The innovation in the paper "Enhanced Light...